Take Your Meds
by PurpleCarpetsAgainstViolence
Summary: It's flu season. Worse than that: It's swine flu season! The agency is advicing all employees to get vaccinated. A certain Very Speacial Agent thinks he really doesn't need to. Gibbs has other plans.


**AN:** Wow, I literally haven't written anything in years! Other than analyzing Shakespeare and Goethe and god-knows-what for school, that is. I mean, I wanted to, I just...couldn't. Then yesterday morning our principal called an assembly to tell us to get that vaccination (naturally none of us are gonna do that ^^) and out of nowhere this little plot bunny popped into my head. And I felt like I was actually able to write it down. I can't begin to tell you how happy that makes me!  
Also, I'm from Germany, so English isn't my first language. And while my English is usually pretty good, it tends to get worse, when I'm writing at 3.30 in the morning. So be gentle. Please?  
Anyway, let's get this thing started.

Gibbs entered the bullpen at 0700 sharp, exactly an hour before he expected his team to show up. He liked being early. It meant he could catch up on some of his paperwork, before people came in and started interrupting him every five seconds.

Not that he particularly minded being interrupted for important matters. Like a new murder investigation. Or a marine's wife being kidnapped. Everything that fell short of those, he did not appreciate being interrupted for.

So his policy had become to show up increasingly early, in order to avoid the multitude of false alarms, requests for interviews and orders to attend yet another talk on sexual harassment in the workplace for as long, as he possibly could.

Putting down his second cup of coffee of the day on top of the three reports that his agents had placed on his desk the night before, he sat down and turned on his computer.

They had investigated the case of a 27-year-old corporal, who had been found dead in her apartment four days ago. Initially ruled a suicide, they hadn't been able to find any indication as to why the young woman might have wanted to kill herself.

Then McGee discovered that the corporal and her boyfriend had been involved in illegal drug trafficking. She had wanted out, he had been scared she'd rat him out to the police, so he shot her with her own gun, only to reappear a few hours later on the scene, all tears and horror at what his "sweetheart" had done to herself. When they confronted him about it, the dirt bag had tried to make a run for it. Now he was in the hospital, with a bullet through his right thigh, waiting to get well enough to be brought to prison.

Gibbs finished reading through the reports his agents had E-mailed him and nodded his approval. It had been quite some time, since he had had to make any of them rewrite their reports.

He proceeded to check his E-mail and found his mood worsen considerably. The first E-mail was from bookkeeping. Apparently, there had been some minor mistake in the last MCRT Financial Stats report that – judging by the panicky tone - had to be dealt with immediately, if he didn't want the whole agency to go bankrupt.

The next two mails were – once again – "invitations" to mandatory lectures on common sense, as he liked to call them. One went by the name of _"De-escalating what has already escalated – how to solve personal problems between you and your colleagues"._ Lecture number two was going to focus on time management. Apparently they were going to be taught _radical, new, easy-to-apply techniques, to help them avoid long hours_.

He wasn't going to say it out loud, but Gibbs was prepared to join Tony in his semi-regular hope that a body would turn up at the right moment and conveniently get them out of both lectures.

Just as he was contemplating ignoring both "invitations" completely (after all, with his catastrophic computer skills he could always claim he had somehow managed to delete the E-mails for good, without even noticing), a loud _bing!_ announced the elevator arriving with DiNozzo and McGee onboard.

Tony greeted Gibbs with a smile and a quick "Morning, boss.", while McGee was over all too occupied with ignoring Tony's impression of Brad Pitt in the latest Tarantino movie.

A week ago, Tony had found out that the junior agent had not yet seen _Inglourious Basterds_. It had been virtually impossible, to stop him, from teasing McGee about it every chance he got since then. Ziva had even joined him. Somehow Quentin Tarantino seemed to make the kind of movies she enjoyed immensely.

Shortly before 0800 the former Mossad officer entered the bullpen, just as Tony was musing on the possibility of demonstrating a scalping for McGee.

When it looked, like Ziva was going to enter into the debate, Gibbs let out a gruff "Do I need to give you lot some work to do?"

This sent all three agents scuffling back to their computers, to focus on their remaining paperwork.

A little flashing light on his desktop alerted Gibbs to the fact that he had received another E-mail. Seeing it had been sent from Autopsy, he opened it quickly. What could Ducky possibly want from him at this hour, with no cases that they were working together?

_Dear Jethro_

_A matter of some importance has just been brought to my attention. Our friend Abigail, who seems to be quite well acquainted with the staff of Bethesda hospital (when I say well acquainted, I am obviously revering to the fierce rivalry between Abigail's bowling team and the one from Bethesda Hospital's Psychiatric Ward) and I were just discussing the dreadful death of one of the bodies down here in Autopsy. The poor lad drowned in his family's swimming pool, when he returned home drunk in the middle of the night. The story reminded Abby of something she had heard during her last bowling tournament, which in turn made me think of a rather tragic play I once visited as a student in Edinburgh._

Gibbs touched the tip of his nose irritably. The Problem with communicating with Ducky via E-mail (or any form of written communication for that matter) was, that there was no way to stop him from going on and on about some unrelated procedure invented by the Aztecs or, as in this case, some ancient Greek tragedy. Gibbs skipped the part that described the play in some detail and continued reading.

_Anyway, I have gone on quite a bit of a rant there, haven't I? What I was planning on telling you is the following:_

_Abigail's story did not only remind me of that marvelous play, it also reminded me of another matter entirely. One that I had quite forgotten about until now. It is not extremely urgent, but you should come down to Autopsy at your earliest convenience, so we can discuss said matter._

_Many Greetings,_

_Ducky_

Gibbs shook his head exasperatedly. Ducky had just sent him a two page essay instead of a simple one sentence message.

_Meet me in Autopsy._

Something along those lines would have been more than enough. Or a quick phone call, telling him just that.

Standing from his desk, he decided to get his third cup of coffee before he would head down to meet Ducky.

Apparently it was a slow day in Autopsy, since when he finally did make it there, Gibbs found Ducky and Palmer hunched over one of the tables, playing a game of checkers.

"What's the matter, Duck?" Gibbs asked without preamble.

"Ah, Jethro" the M.E. greeted his friend without fully turning away from his game. "I have been waiting for you to come and pay us a visit."

"Slow day?" Gibbs asked, jerking his chin in the direction of their checkerboard.

Ducky followed his gaze, then smiled.

"Well, let's say it has not been extremely busy so far. But then again, I am always relieved when Mr Palmer here and I can find some time to have a little game of draught. He tells me, the Americans call it checkers. A rather peculiar name, don't you think? Why, in most languages this game is called dames. Probably in reference to ancient Greece, where – "

"Duck!" Gibbs interrupted his friend with a raised eyebrow. "You wanted to talk to me?"

Ducky nodded, not at all fazed by being cut off like that.

"I talked to Abigail this morning. We were discussing this poor boy's untimely demise. It made me think of – "

"A play, that made you think of something else." Gibbs interrupted again. This was threatening to turn into a repeat of the earlier E-mail. "What'd it make you think of?"

The elderly M.E. sighed good-naturedly and motioned for his assistant to step outside for a moment.

"You do remember how, about two weeks ago we were sent the notifications from the FDA, advising every agency employee to get the vaccination for swine influence?" he asked, once the doors had closed behind Palmer.

Gibbs remembered, He had been in early that day, as usual. In his E-mail folder he had found a letter from FDA, listing all the possible risks of contracting swine flu. It had been accompanied by a recommendation from the director that all team leaders encourage their subordinates to get the vaccine in order to avoid an agency wide spread of the disease.

He had decided that personally he wasn't going to get the vaccination. Why would he, when he hadn't been sick for years and was quite confident that, if he did get infected, he could fight it off quite easily.

Nevertheless he had forwarded the E-mail to his team. Whether Ziva and McGee had decided to get it or not was anyone's guess. Tony, he had specifically told to go, let Ducky take care of it. His Senior Field Agent was at too much of a risk, what with his plague-damaged lungs and general back luck.

So why did Ducky feel the need to bring this up right now?

"It seems that young Anthony has not gotten his shot yet."

Gibbs looked at him for a long moment. Ducky could not see the conflicting emotions that were coursing through his friend on his face. He hid them quite well, but the M.E. knew him well enough, to realize that anger and fear were fighting quite the battle inside his mind.

Anger that DiNozzo had apparently disobeyed a direct order.

Anger that the kid would put himself in so much danger, just to avoid a little prick with a needle.

Fear that they would have to work through another episode of Tony lying in a hospital bed, gasping for breath.

Ducky could see that for now, anger was winning by several miles.

"YOU were supposed to give him that shot _two weeks ago_, Duck!" he barked, directing his anger at the doctor for the moment. He'd have time to deal with DiNozzo soon enough.

"I know." Ducky allowed. "And he did come down here, to get the vaccine. But you know how the lad is around needles. He saw it and started making excuses. I suppose somewhere along the line he must have distracted me. He gave me that smile of his and assured me he'd be more comfortable getting the shot at the hospital."

Gibbs raised an incredulous eyebrow at that. How did people take that kind of BS from DiNozzo and not notice it?

"This morning I remembered the episode and started feeling doubtful, whether young Anthony had actually gone to the hospital." Ducky finished his tale. " I asked Abigail to hack into the databases of all the hospitals in the DC area and Tony has not visited any of them since he was treated for dehydration when you returned from Northern Africa."

Gibbs swore softly. He turned to leave Autopsy.

"Jethro, I really _am_ sorry!" Ducky called after his retreating back.

"You still got that syringe, Duck?" Gibbs asked, not turning around or slowing his pace.

"Why, yes…"

"Keep it ready!"

When Gibbs exited the elevator, he was greeted by the sound of DiNozzo whining about the paperwork he had to complete every time he fired his weapon in the field. Somehow that caused the anger he had been feeling earlier to reach boiling point.

"David, McGee!" he barked, as he entered the bullpen. "Lunch!"

His three agents looked at him with blank faces.

"Lunch?" Ziva asked. "What…?

"Go. Eat lunch. Now!" Gibbs ordered brusquely.

"But…Boss, it's only 1100…lunch break is not until…"

McGee's feeble protest was cut short by Gibbs slamming his palm onto his computer's monitor.

Hastily all three of his agents started gathering up their respective jackets and wallets.

"Where do you think you're going?" he snapped, as Tony got up from his desk.

Tony looked at him, his head tilted slightly to the left.

"Lunch?" he offered. When Gibbs just kept staring at him, he slowly caught on and sat back down. "Or not. Staying right here, boss."

Even after Ziva and McGee had left, shooting Tony some sympathetic glances, Gibbs let him wait.

That worried Tony. Gibbs usually let him know just exactly when and how he had screwed up, shouted at him for a while and then they all moved on. When he was making him wait, that was when he had reason to be seriously worried.

When Gibbs finally did look up from his revised financial report and motioned for him to stand in front of his desk, he almost wished they were back to Gibbs giving him the silent treatment.

Standing in front of desks was never a good thing. It usually meant pain of some sort.

Standing in front of Gibbs' desk, getting yelled at and head slapped.

Standing in front of the director's desk, being told that he would be leaving DC for the USS Ronald Reagan.

Standing in front of his headmaster's desk, being told that his mother had been in a car accident.

Standing in front of his father's desk in his study, being told what a disappointment he was and hoping that this time he wouldn't…_No, not gonna go there_!

Standing in front of desks was a bad thing. He was just going to leave it at that.

He tried to school his features into a carefree smile, as he slowly walked across the bullpen. It wasn't the best he could muster, but he was quite sure that for now it would suffice.

"What's the matter, boss?" he asked as nonchalantly as possible, once he had covered the distance between their desks.

"You gotten any shots recently?" he asked, cutting straight to the chase.

Tony tried hard, not to screw up his face as an indication that he knew what his boss was talking about. Still, lying to him was not an option, so he shook his head once.

"Remember, when you had the plague?" Gibbs continued his line of questioning.

Tony nodded. A lot of times he wished he didn't remember. Especially the bits that involved him gasping for air and trying desperately to catch every single breath. But it looked, like he was stuck with those memories for good.

"You also remember what Ducky said about your lungs, after you recovered?"

Again, he nodded. Mt. Gibbs was just about to go off in an epic eruption of accusations and disappointment and head slaps. He could feel it. Not much he could do about it at this point.

"Said they'd be a little weak, boss." The answer was so much of an understatement, it almost qualified as a lie.

"Weak?" Gibbs took some time to ponder on that word silently. Then came the explosion. "WEAK, DiNozzo? Your lungs are permanently damaged!"

Tony felt his shoulders square, his eyes staring straight ahead at some point behind Gibbs' left ear, his whole body standing at attention. It was something he had picked up at the military academy. Someone pulls out the Marine bastard, you stand at attention at let it wash over you. The reaction was almost pavlovian. Nothing he could do about it.

"Dr Pitt said you've gotta be careful, not to get a regular _cold_! What the hell were you thinking, not getting that shot? Think you can fight off the goddamn swine flu, with _your_ lungs? Well, newsflash DiNozzo: You can't. You catch that thing, you're probably gonna die! So I don't give a damn whether or not you like those needles! You get over that and do as I tell you or you're off my team!"

Tony dropped his gaze at that. He knew it was an empty threat, but still...

"What?!" Gibbs snapped, when he saw the change in his agent.

Tony kept staring intently at the crunched up coffee cups in Gibbs' trash. He only counted three. That explained his boss' foul mood. That and the fact that he had practically disobeyed a direct order by not letting Ducky give him that shot.

But his fear of needles was not something you just "got over". It wasn't even a fear of needles per se. It was a dislike of all medication in general. Because most of it had terrible affects on his body and also because of…other reasons. Obviously the time when he had had the plague and they had kept pushing needles and syringes and IVs in every possible part of his body day in and day out hadn't helped much, either.

"T's not that easy." He admitted quietly.

Gibbs' anger immediately subsided, once he saw Tony's emotional walls crumble. Still, he knew from experience that if he softened his attitude now, the walls would be back up in no time. So he kept up his Marine bastard act and continued, albeit slightly less forcefully.

"The hell it is, DiNozzo! You're scared of something, you face it, you beat it. Easy as that!"

Yeah, like he hadn't tried that, when he had gone down to Autopsy two weeks ago. But _deciding_ that you weren't afraid of a stupid injection, that might end up saving your life and actually _not being_ afraid of said stupid injection that might end up saving his life were two completely different things.

Once he had been there and seen the giant syringe with the sticky medicine in it, his resolve had evaporated. He'd been all charming smiles and stories of girls he needed to pick up _right now _and, damn it, most people were so easy to manipulate, when he really wanted to. Most people. Gibbs wasn't so easy, though.

"Want me to come down with you? Hold your hand?" Gibbs asked as if he had read his mind. It was meant as a joke. A sarcastic comment. But still, if for some reason Tony decided to put aside his issues for a minute and say yes, he was fully prepared to come with him.

Tony's undignified whine of "Nooo!" didn't sound nearly as convincing as he had hoped it would.

He decided to try and deflect the whole thing with a movie reverence then. That usually worked, right? He conveniently ignored the fact, that with Gibbs it almost never did. If only because Gibbs simply didn't know any of the movies he was constantly revering to or because he was really annoyed by them was anyone's guess.

"Think again" he quoted that stupid film with the penguins that he had watched that one night last year when he hadn't been able to sleep. "I don't _do_ needles!"

He wasn't quite satisfied with the way it had come out. It wasn't a really well known line, the intonation hadn't been quite right and anyway, since he didn't think calling his boss "Dr Deranged" as the reverence required, would have been a really smart move right now, the whole thing hadn't sounded like a movie reverence at all. He felt he needed to make it clear, that it was.

"That was…uh…you know, Skipper. From that movie? The Penguins of Madagascar? 2008? Animation movie? It's…"

Suddenly Gibbs was standing directly in front of him, his right hand raised as if to slap him on the back of the head, but he didn't.

"Want me to start doing that again, Tony?" he asked not unkindly.

Tony swallowed.

"Not particularly, sir."

Gibbs' voice dropped to almost a whisper.

"Then get down to Ducky and let him keep you alive. Pretend, he's injecting you with some serum that's gonna turn you into a superhero, if that helps you." he added, when his Senior Field Agent still didn't move.

Tony studied his face intently for a few seconds. When he found the traces of humor he was looking for, he smiled. Not his usual, flashy, charming DiNozzo smile that he thought would get him anything he wanted. A small, shy, genuine smile, thanking his boss for making the whole thing a little bit less serious.

"You know none of the superheroes become superheroes by being injected with anything willingly, right? That's what the bad guys do. The good guys get bitten by radioactive spiders or they come from different planets or they just happen to be around, when a chemical experiment goes horribly wrong, or – "

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs cut him off. But his quick smile betrayed his disapproving tone. Tony didn't have to know that he had once, as a kid actually collected comic books. Now _that_ really didn't go with his reputation. "Get down to Autopsy! Get that shot or you don't have to come back up here!"

Tony nodded resignedly. He'd try again. And this time there probably wasn't any way out of it. On the other hand he had basically just heard Gibbs tell him, that it mattered, if he lived or died. Between all the shouting and threatening to fire him, that is. That had to count for something, right?

As his agent turned and approached the elevator, Gibbs picked up his cell phone and hit speed dial. DiNozzo said he didn't want him there holding his hand. Probably didn't want an audience. But the kid sure as hell needed someone to coax him into letting Ducky give him that injection. To just be there beside him. And if he wouldn't let _him_ do that…

The call connected.

"Abs, Tony needs you to meet him in Autopsy."

Hey, you managed to get through till the end! Thanks for reading! Here's a Caff-Pow!  
If you feel like reviewing, telling me what worked, what didn't, etc. feel free to press that lovely little button right below. ^^


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